Sunday, March 13, 2005

Lojban vs programming languages vs natural language

Ben, this idea is wrong:-----Lojban is far more similar to natural languages in both intent, semantics and syntax than to any of the programming languages. -----

Actually Lojban is closer to programming languages than to natural languages.Structure of Lojban and programming languages is predefined.Structure of natural languages is not predefined. Structure of a natural language is defined by examples of using this natural language. This is the key difference between Lojban and Natural Language.

Since structure of natural language is not predefined, you cannot put language structure into NL parser code. Instead you need to implement system which will learn rules of natural language from massive amount of examples in this natural language.

You are trying to code natural language rules in text parser, aren’t you?That’s why you theoretically can parse Lojban and programming languages, but you cannot properly parse any natural language even theoretically.

If you want properly parse natural language, you need predefine as little rules as possible.I think that natural language parser has to be able to recognize words and phrases.That's all that NL text parser has to be able to do.

All other mechanisms of natural language understanding should be implemented outside the text parser itself.These mechanisms are:- Word dictionary and phrase dictionary (too serve as a link between natural language (words, phrases) and internal memory (concepts).- Relations between concepts and mechanisms which keep these relations up to date.